


Birds

by strawberrytea



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anorexia, Cuddling, Drama, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Paris - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-14 00:07:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2170482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberrytea/pseuds/strawberrytea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The back of my hand is slowly caressing your bare, soft back. The evening sky is filled with stars and they’re twinkling through the lace curtains. Paris is resting. Your ribs are now showing clearly in your pure white skin and during these past months you have become so fragile, so slender and thin, like a small butterfly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birds

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there ♥ 
> 
> This is the first time for me posting my works here so I'm feeling a little nervous. ;w; I wrote this story actually about two years ago and it was originally in my native language and with a different fandom. However, I never got a chance to publish it so I decided to translate it. Lately I've been very much addicted to Ereri, that's why I wanted to change the fandom to tell the story about these cuties teehee..
> 
> I don't really know how to feel about this text because the subject of this story gets me very emotional, I think that's why the story has a melancholic atmosphere from the beginning till the end. Also, I really have to point out that I don't have any personal experiences from anorexia and the way I describe it may not actually represent the real experience of it. 
> 
> The story is situated in Paris because I simply love that magical, romantic city of love. ♥
> 
> my best friend checked the story for me, but feel free to tell me if there are any typos !  
> All the comments&criticism is always appreciated.  
> Please enjoy ~

 

 

The back of my hand is slowly caressing your bare, soft back. The evening sky is filled with stars and they’re twinkling through the lace curtains. Paris is resting. Your ribs are now showing clearly in your pure white skin and during these past months you have become so fragile, so slender and thin, like a small butterfly. However, I'm sure that your little wings wouldn't carry you on too long, they would break right away into ashes and dust after the very first few flutters. In my childhood, I used to dream about birds. Oh, how I wished to be that beautiful creature in the sky, with thick feathers embracing all around me. Birds were watching the world above, higher than anyone else, somewhere in an unreachable place. Birds were free, I used to think. If I could be like them, I would fly from telephone wire to another, I would climb on the top of the apple tree and scream everyone about my great freedom.

But I'm locked up in a cage.

With your slim arms you pull up the blanket closely around us and I can feel your body warmth against mine. I have always longed for your endearments, because only around you I'm in a safe place, it feels like in a beautiful view from a painting, where only flowers and dragonflies exist. A moment later you kiss my forehead and I feel like heaven.

  
Winter is making its way so fast this year that neither of us haven't noticed thermometer’s raise to the coldest possible temperatures. Ground is already filled with snow and the freezing wind is making my cheekbones red every time I step outside. I miss the warmth of summer and the feel of the sandy beach under my toes. I have decorated my room with a group of pictures, put them next to my window to collect all the dearest and most meaningful moments. The newest ones I took last summer. You're nineteen and happy, you smile and I can see the pink glow all around your cute, innocent face. You have bright, green eyes and you’re filled with the joy of life. Where are you now? What happened to that Eren?

  
You have already fallen asleep next to me but my own mind is still filled with these useless thoughts. On the other hand, now that I think about it, I never fall completely asleep during our naps. I leave you on your own for a while and walk to the kitchen to make us some tea. Vanilla flavour is your favourite. My apartment is definitely a small one, but I feel like home around here with my lavender candles and wine bottles. A lot more like home than the place where I grew up, which is a dilapidated old villa far in the countryside of France. A minute later when the boiling water is ready, a familiar scent filled with sweet vanilla wafts around the walls. It smells like home and like summer. Teacups feel warm in my hands but when I walk back to the bedroom, I freeze in the doorway.

My heart is filled with pain as well as something else that I cannot explain as I glance towards your tiny body covered with soft blankets. How small and vulnerable have you become, so petite and powerless.

 

But I know the reason.

 

You have this little voice inside you. The voice is torturing you, ordering you what to do, it's dropping you over the edge of a rock to the deepest ravine, leaving you there, until your body is nothing but bones and skin filled with red scars. That voice has humiliated you, taken away everything that is left from you, your joyfulness, your reasons to live, your reasons to love. These are the times when I often worry if you could make it for another day. Only if I knew how to destroy that voice of inside you, the enemy which turned you into this Eren I’m almost scared of.

Slowly, you crawl off from the bed and with a soft, sleepy smile on your face you accept the tasty vanilla tea. I let my fingertips caress softly your brown hair and suddenly I remember last summer again. I hate how those images just flash right through my mind, because I know that I can never go there again. But I can’t forget the way a gust of a wind messed your hair when we walked next to the coastline of the sea and your hand felt so warm around mine. And you laughed with your tiny lips. You were looking at me with your large eyes coloured with the shades of turquoise and I saw it – the way you loved this moment and the way you loved life. You wanted to see more of the world, travel around from a place to another because you knew how much beautiful things existed in this universe. You whispered that you wanted to see that with me – all of that, and the way you kissed me made me lose a heartbeat even though I hadn’t been a teenager for a long time.

Oh, how I wish that I could get the days back where I could live without measures, doctor appointments and dry lettuce leaves.

 

On the next morning a heavy snowfall welcomes us to the new day. Your body is not pressed against mine like it should be and for a moment I feel so terrified to wake up alone in my small apartment. It feels lonely, the horrifying thought of you leaving me behind. With my pyjamas and sleep slippers on I walk away from the bedroom. It is so cold and you are nowhere to be found. Carefully, I open the bathroom’s door and there I meet a young, insecure man measuring his waist in front of the mirror. I cannot help feeling disappointed about your actions. I have tried my best to protect you, to hide every single little thing that could hurt you and lower your self-esteem which has already fallen to the bottom and cannot be lift up. This kind of behaviour is making you even more broken, even smaller and you’re slowly moving to a place where I cannot reach you anymore.

“Eren.”

I let out a long sigh. I feel so tired. You turn around from the mirror to face me with an annoyed look on your face. You don’t want me to see you, not like this. Not when you feel like you’re the most disgusting thing ever created in this lifetime. However, I walk towards you and wrap my arms around your thin waist and I press a kiss on your neck as a good morning greeting.

 

You slap my hands away from you.

“Don’t you dare to look at me like that, Levi,” you start and no matter how strong you may try to act, I can feel that you’re holding back tears.

  
“We agreed that you would stop this.” That makes you even more furious.

  
“Shut up! You will never understand how I feel or what I’m going through!”

I can see the flames of anger inside of you and I’m holding back for wanting to punch you. You’re the one who doesn’t understand. You told me that you just wanted to be beautiful. Well, guess what? Starving yourself to death did not fulfill that wish. You became too thin and too weak, you have dark circles around your eyes and the soft smile that I used to know is now nowhere to be found on your tired face.

  
Did I not give enough love to you? No matter how many times I said that you were too adorable for me to handle, no matter how many summer nights I whispered right next to your ear how much I adored your tanned skin and your messy brown hair. I told you how much I loved the way your soft skin felt under my finger as I wrapped you around my arms and kept you there, kissed your forehead and your cheekbones, promised that I’ll always be yours.

  
My dear Eren, where are you?

 

I remember when we first met in high school and you were as sweet as the first flower blossoms in the spring. I remember how your voice still had a soft, a little childlike tune in it and it made my knees feel weak and made something burn in my chest.

  
And now, I pray every single night when I see your thin body and hear your exhausted, irritated voice that someday, you’d come back to me. You’d be the same Eren that made me fall in love with you in the first place. I want to hear you laugh again, I want you to tell me that you’re too shy to kiss me first and then blush so hard that it makes me wonder how of all the people I was the one to catch the cutest boy in our whole school.

  
You walk away from the bathroom and slam the door with a loud noise. I break the mirror and crush it into million pieces so that little thing could never hurt you or your soul ever again.

  
*~*

  
The streets of Paris are as crowded and noisy as usual, but this time winter is colouring everything with white. I’m having a hard time to keep my balance still in a metro with so much people around me and oh, how I wish that my university was situated next to my apartment. When I walk outside to the freezing air again, I see a group of birds resting their wings in a roof of an opera house. I let out a sigh.

  
You are not getting any better, I can’t heal you. You won’t let me. Day after day you’re becoming even more vulnerable than you already are. I’ve tried to drag you out to the doctor’s appointment again, but you’re always sitting by the window alone trying desperately to create a wall around you, a place where I can’t reach. Slowly, you’re slipping away from me and instead of sleeping against my bare chest, you choose to sleep on my small sofa even though I know you’re shivering without me keeping you warm.  
  
Only around you I’m safe, only around you I’m in a marvellous place, in that of a painting. But the beautiful painting is staring to break, butterflies and dragonflies are dropping to the ground with their wings crashed. Sleeping alone, I’m in the dark, surrounded by rainclouds and lightning.

  
You’re cold. Colder than this winter and you’re dropping from the deepest ravine over all the way to the ocean’s seabed where only frozen corals and icicles are embracing your body. And all I can do is watch when you fall apart, losing it - everything, and everyone, until the voice of inside your head is all there is left. The little voice which is making you weak and small, causing every little pretty detail of yours disappear, like your babyish cheeks with a pink glow. And I keep dreaming constantly about the old you, the one who was only an innocent teenager, the one who held me tight without a doubt, the one who told me that I was yours and you were mine.

  
When I finally manage to open my front door again after a long school day, I can feel the winter’s coldness even indoors. Does it ever get warm again, I wonder, as I decide to keep my warm scarf around my neck when I enter the kitchen. I make some coffee and you accompany me. You always use cream and sugar but I prefer to drink my coffee black. We keep watching winter views and neither of us says a word.  
  
I think about freedom, how someday I would just fly like a little bird in the sky and never look back. I would leave my past to where it had come from and keep moving forward, somewhere without a real purpose or destination. I would burn all the tape measures and scales, I would break all the mirrors into pieces. I would be the greatest bird out there, a beautiful one with big, colourful feathers. The whole world would look up to me and envy my great freedom.

 

  
Days pass by and everything’s the same, then one Monday morning soft sunbeams wake me up for the first time in months. Something warm is pressed against my back and it makes me smile a little. You walked here next to me during the night from the sofa, like a child who crawls to his mother’s bed after seeing a nightmare. That again reminds me of the old you, the childlike one. It’s a difficult thing living with you, because your mood swings are as strong as the ocean’s waves. But isn’t that logical, since you live under the sea?

  
“Good morning, Levi,” you whisper right next to my ear.

  
I don’t want to wake up yet and face the morning light. Instead I keep smiling into a soft blanket with you still pressed so close to me that I feel your warm breath tickling my neck.

  
During breakfast you agree to eat without having a fight which has already become a usual morning activity. The sight is making my eyes wet with happiness, when you keep munching pancakes with strawberries like any other person out there.

  
“Levi, what’s wrong?” You ask even though you know.

  
Today something is different with me, because my longing for freedom is somewhere no one can reach. It’s like all those birds would be million miles away from me, and all I need is to have you, my sweet Eren, here with me.

  
Oh, freedom. Even though it’s important, without your love my life would be meaningless. Why wouldn’t I keep living locked up in this cage, even when its beauty is unstable. Even if by night you have thrown up the breakfast I made with love, can’t I just close my eyes from the fact that you’re sick and imagine us making vows under the Arc de Triomphe. When it’s time to go to sleep we make love for the first time in months, but it’s neither magical nor romantic. It makes me almost want to cry as I embrace your skinny body and you’re so fragile that you could break apart even from the power of my small kisses on your collarbones. Oh, dear Eren, please don’t leave me yet. Stay here, stay with me and we’ll figure it out together how to save you. You leave my neck with lots of red marks but that’s alright, because I’m yours and yours only.

 

  
~*~

  
   
Lately I’ve found myself feeling lost. My thoughts are a huge mess and my legs aren’t strong enough to carry me all the way to school. I just sit quietly in my bed and watch down to the grey city view where nothing ever happens. Every now and then, I simply leave you and your bony collarbones behind and focus only to myself. I watch the small snowflakes and I want to forget. No matter how strong I should act and keep myself together, be yours and yours only, it’s sometimes too much to ask. You still don’t eat but you kiss my cheekbones and keep me warm.

  
And sometimes I agree to take you outside, around other people. Your steps are all weak because you’ve lost too much muscles and weight, you can barely keep your balance still. I hold your hand tightly to make sure that you won’t fall and you look at me with a tender smile that makes me see something inside you that I haven’t seen for too long. You look lively, energetic, happy. Maybe you even start to realize that healing is a good thing, getting better is worth it. In that small moment everything is suddenly alright, I can feel the sunlight all around my face giving both of us strength, telling us to keep moving forward, to fight it.

  
And in a very small moment everything is the same. You fall back to the deepest ravine and create new walls around you, making me go away from your kingdom.

I wander alone in the forest filled with blankness and emptiness, as does my poor soul. And I can’t find a way out from there, because once again you no longer stay beside me during the sleepless nights. I keep repeating to myself that I should be strong, I have to be strong enough to heal you. I watch Paris from the windows and there’s only the same greyness with business people in a hurry that every big city holds.

  
That’s one of the nights when you decide to leave your coldness behind and you open the bedroom’s door. You walk behind me to caress my spine and kiss my neck. You always strip me so gently and softly, even though every physical act should be painful for your body. And I don’t know what else to do than just make love with you again and wait for the morning when you turn back to yourself with the company of your little voice giving you self-harming thoughts and making you hide into your huge walls again.  
  
But when I sleep next to your warmth in the middle of the night, I whisper quietly, please don’t leave me.

 

  
And then that day arrives.

Even though I have waited for it to come, it’s still so hard for me to bear it. I don’t want to believe it.

  
You’re gone.

  
You’ve left me for good, gotten tired of this city and my small apartment. There’s a note on a kitchen table, a promise to get help and take care of yourself. Oh, Eren, you can barely even walk. I look around me and realize how small my home actually is, now that I’m making coffee alone. The other side of my wardrobe is left with empty shelves. Even the red marks on my neck are starting to disappear.

  
I understand it now. I’ve become a bird. You’ve opened my cage, given me the freedom I often dreamed about. My freedom is great and I’m ready to fly across the Atlantic, see every sunrise from the telephone wires and travel the world’s most exotic places.

  
However, birds are alone.

  
Something cold and wet is running from my eyes. I’m a bird and you walk around the street like an ill person without a home to go. Is that where you really want to spend the rest of your life, in the deepest ravine, in the seabed?

  
My heart is filled with your name because my sheets still smell like you and I can’t sleep. I think about your small, fairylike body with no one to take care of it and how that little voice of yours is the only thing keeping you alive.

  
Then I remember the greatness of the birds who fly in the blue sky and they’re calling me. It’s the middle of the night and I climb on top of the roof.

I can breathe my freedom.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel so sorry for the suffering boys ;__;  
> maybe next time I'll write something with happy Ereri ;w;


End file.
